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Italian Argentines
|popplace = Throughout Argentina (Plurality in the Pampas) |languages = Rioplatense Spanish, Italian and Italian dialects. |religions = Roman Catholicism }}Italian Argentines (Italian: italo-argentini, Spanish: ítalo-argentinos) are Argentine-born citizens of Italian descent or Italian-born people who reside in Argentina. Italian immigration is the second largest ethnic origins of modern Argentinians. Together with Spanish immigration as well as the colonial population that settled previously to the major migratory movements into Argentina.In 2005, the Servicio de Huellas Digitales Genéticas of the Universidad de Buenos Aires concluded an investigation directed by the Argentinean geneticist Daniel Corach. The study was done over genetic markers in a sample of 320 male subjects, taken at random of a group of 12 000 individuals from 9 provinces. It is estimated up to 25 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent (up to 62.5% of the total population). History Small groups of Italians started to immigrate to Argentina as early as the second half of the 18th century. However, the stream of Italian immigration to Argentina became a mass phenomenon only in the years 1880–1920 during the Great European immigration wave to Argentina, peaking between 1900–1914; about 2 million settled between 1880–1920, and just 1 million between 1900–1914. In 1914, the city of Buenos Aires alone had more than 300,000 Italian-born inhabitants, representing 25% of the total population. The Italian immigrants were primarily male, aged between 14 and 50 and more than 50% literate; in terms of occupations, 78.7% in the active population were agricultural workers or unskilled laborers, 10.7% artisans, while only 3.7% worked in commerce or as professionals. Characteristics of Italian immigration in Argentina Areas of origin In the decades before 1900, Italian immigrants initially arrived mainly from the northern regions of Piedmont, Veneto and Lombardy; after the turn of the century and the unification of Italy and the establishment of the North as the dominant region of the Unified Italy, immigration patterns shifted to rural and former independent Southern Italy, especially Campania, Calabria and Sicily. In Argentine slang, tano (from Napulitano, "Neapolitan") is still used for all people of Italian descent where it originally means inhabitant of the former independent state the Kingdom of Naples. . The assumption that emigration from cities was negligible has an important exception, and that is the city of Naples. The city went from being the capital of its own kingdom in 1860 to being just another large city in Italy. The loss of bureaucratic jobs and the subsequently declining financial situation led to high unemployment. In the early 1880s epidemics of cholera also struck the city, causing many people to leave. According to a study in 1990, considering the high proportion of returnees, a positive or negative correlation between region of origin and of destination can be proposed. Southern Italians indicate a more permanent settlement. The authors conclude that the Argentinian society in its Italian component is the result of Southern rather than Northern influences. Culture Language According to Ethnologue, Argentina has more than 1,500,000 Italian speakers, making it the third most spoken language in the nation (after Spanish and English). In spite of the great many Italian immigrants, the Italian language never truly took hold in Argentina, in part because at the time, the great majority of Italians spoke specifically their regional languages and not many the national standard Italian. This prevented any expansion of the use of the Italian language as a primary language in Argentina. The similarity of the Italian dialects with Spanish also enabled the immigrants to assimilate, by using the Spanish language, with relative ease. Italian immigration from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century made a lasting and significant impact on the intonation of Argentina's vernacular Spanish. Preliminary research has shown that Rioplatense Spanish, particularly the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects (especially Neapolitan) and differ markedly from the patterns of other forms of Spanish. That correlates well with immigration patterns as Argentina, and particularly Buenos Aires, had huge numbers of Italian settlers since the 19th century. According to a study conducted by National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, and published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (ISSN 1366-7289) The researchers note that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, starting in the beginning of the 20th century with the main wave of Southern Italian immigration. Before that, the porteño accent was more similar to that of Spain, particularly Andalusia.Napolitanos y porteños, unidos por el acento (in spanish) Much of Lunfardo arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, and Poles. Most Italian and Spanish immigrants spoke their regional languages and dialects and not standard Italian or Spanish; other words arrived from the pampa by means of the gauchos; a small number originated in Argentina's native population. Most sources believe that Lunfardo originated in jails, as a prisoner-only argot. Circa 1900, the word lunfardo itself (originally a deformation of lombardo in several Italian dialects) was used to mean "outlaw". Lunfardo words are inserted in the normal flow of Rioplatense Spanish sentences. Thus, a Spanish-speaking Mexican reading tango lyrics will need, at most, the translation of a discrete set of words, and not a grammar guide. Tango lyrics use lunfardo sparsely, but some songs (such as El Ciruja, or most lyrics by Celedonio Flores) employ lunfardo heavily. "Milonga Lunfarda" by Edmundo Rivero is an instructive and entertaining primer on lunfardo usage. Examples: * Parlar – To speak (from the Italian parlare – to speak) * Manyar – To know / to eat (from the Italian mangiare – to eat) * Mina – Female (from the Italian femmina – female) * Laburar – To work (from Italian lavorare – to work) * Fiaca – laziness (from the Italian fiacco – weak) * Chapar – (from the northern Italian dialect ciapar – to take) * Estufo – (from the Italian stufo – bored) * Buonyorno – (from the Italian buongiorno – good morning) Between about 1880 and 1900, Argentina received a large number of peasants from the South of Italy, who arrived with little or no schooling in the Spanish language. As those immigrants strove to communicate with the local criollos, they produced a variable mixture of Spanish with Italian languages and dialects, specially Neapolitan. This pidgin language was given the derogatory name cocoliche by the locals. Since the children of the immigrants grew up speaking Spanish at school, work, and military service, Cocoliche remained confined mostly to the first generation immigrants, and slowly fell out of use. The pidgin has been depicted humorously in literary works and in the Argentine sainete theater, such as by Dario Vittori. References Category:Argentines of Italian descent Category:European Argentine